Ask a Nurse: Our Amazing Bodies

Pamela is a mother of 6 amazing children ages 11 to 24. She is a nurse educator and loves to travel overseas to work in medical clinics and teach health-related topics to schools and communities. She has been married to her best friend, Steve, for 29 years. She has many different interests including reading, writing (NOT arithmetic!), baking, teaching, and spending time with her family. She lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband and two youngest daughters. To see all Ask a Nurse articles click here.

Our Amazing Bodies

Our bodies are amazing! We are unique and very meticulously designed. Today I want to give you some information on just how wonderful and awe-inspiring our bodies are!

Our brains can store a vast amount of information. Everything we have ever experienced, read, heard, seen, smelled, etc. is stored in your brain. Some scientists believe our brains can store over 4 Terabytes of information! If you want to get an idea of how much that is, a Terabyte could hold about 1,000 copies of the encyclopedia Britannica or 300 hours of video…now multiply that by 4-Wow!

Bones can be stronger than steel! If you compare strength pound for pound, bones come out six times stronger! Bones support our weight, protect our organs, and make new blood cells. Eating a diet rich in calcium is important to maintain bone health, as is weight bearing exercise (like walking, running, jumping rope).

Adrenaline can give us super human strength! This hormone is released into our body during times of extreme fright or stress. You probably have had someone creep up behind you and scare you. Remember how your heart was racing, you were breathing faster and you felt jittery? That feeling is from the excretion of adrenaline into your system. There have been numerous reports of ordinary people lifting cars off someone to save that person’s life. When they tried to lift the car days later, it wouldn’t even budge!

Super-sonic hearing? You betcha! Humans are able to “see by hearing.” We can actually make a mental picture of our surroundings and judge distances by sound waves bouncing off objects. This is called. “Echolocation.” Remind you of bats? Bats do this, too. When people lose their sight they are able to do this even better. There is a man who has been blind his entire life, and he loves to go mountain biking!

Creating life! What is more of a miracle than growing little humans inside our own bodies? Everything about conception, pregnancy and birth is absolutely amazing! First of all, a woman’s egg will die within 12 hours if not fertilized and many conditions need to be right for that to happen. Then, two cells become one-wow! After that, the cell divides so rapidly that by 21 days facial features are forming and the heart begins beating. So much goes on within the mother’s body during the 40 weeks gestation to accommodate and nourish the growing baby! Then for the baby to be born, another set of miracles must occur. Much more than can be explained in this article!

The nervous system is very quick; it can transmit impulses at a tremendous speed of 100 meters per second. The speed of message transmission to the brain can be as high as 180 miles per hour. We can feel heat, cold, softness and textures by just a touch. We can tell by a touch whether our child has a fever or if our skin is dry. Our nerves work so well and so quickly that if we feel pain, our brain gets the message almost immediately, usually in time to prevent further injury by pulling away!

Aren’t we amazing? Take a moment to appreciate how beautiful, strong, skilled and sensitive you are! Take care of your amazing body by feeding it healthy food, getting exercise, drinking lots of water and getting enough rest.